America still leads the world in two areas: doing weird things with its animals, like putting squirrels and dogs on water-skis, and creating awesome weapons, like the Stealth fighter jet. Now it’s found an ingenious way of combining these two skills, by using the animal kingdom to manufacture new military toys.

Yes, the critters that you can see at the zoo, you’ll now be able to see replicated on the battlefield. It’s all been inspired by the Pentagon. In the early 2000s, led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, it invited the magicians of American war-craft to come up with munitions that mimic biological designs.

The most recent fruit of this project is the ‘Nano-Hummingbird’. It’s a remote-controlled robotic bird, that has a wing-span of 6.5 inches and weighs less than a AA battery. It’s propelled by the flapping of its… Read more